The same procedure as every year

New year’s eve is a moment for traditions and repetition. In German television, the old “Dinner for one” sketch is repeated over and over again. Just as regularly, Leverkusen decides to stop with football for the rest of the season which made us all optimistic to still reach the second place and what should I say? We still can, we are no more than a point behind. But for us, there’s another repetition every year, concerning the game in Hamburg. In the words of James and Miss Sophie in the sketch, it goes more or less like that: “The same procedure as last year, Mr. Klopp?” – “The same procedure as every year, Mirko.” Ok, it certainly wasn’t easy to forecast what our opponent would do, considering that they had changed the coach before the game against us for the second time this season. But different from last time, we couldn’t proof that we don’t mind what the opponent does and only focus on our own performance in order to destroy a weak and unsettled team. Instead, we played as if we had already won and if it was only a question of showing up in order to get the three points. And that led to the above mentioned repetition. As always in the past few years, we left all our points in Hamburg, even though we had been in some kind of a flow. I don’t want to lose too many words about the game, though. It has been bad from the beginning, the team seemingly not willing to give all (or at least a part) and HSV with the simple change of a new coach had some more spirit and confidence as they had in the past games and that was already enough to prevent us from being dangerous in any way. The few times that we really did play a good ball, we missed the last pass or the right time for a shot. And the one time Hamburg got dangerous in the first half, they scored. Our complete defence looked terribly indisposed. Lasogga could get past at the edge of the penalty area where he should never ever be able to give a cross, but he could and in the middle, Jiracek could head the ball in the net even though he was accompanied (if you could even call it that) by two defenders. And it got even worse. Bender – one of the best in the first half – had to leave in the break for Reus. In the beginning, we were thinking that this could may still be a tactical decision, but later today, our fears were confirmed. Bender will be out for another 6 to 10 weeks. Reus, however, did bring some extra offensive power and for a moment a little hope raised deep in our hearts that we could still be able to turn the game around, but then Sahin lost the ball in midfield in a quite clumsy way, leaving Lasogga alone on his way to the 2:0 and nothing could stop him from scoring. Now, it looked really bad and shortly after, Hamburg even scored for a third time. For some reason that was not clearly visible in the stadium, the referee didn’t give the goal. Still 2:0, still some little hope left. And we finally created some danger and some chances, the biggest being Piczszek’s header to the crossbar. But it wasn’t our day, we didn’t deserve it anyway with the spirit we showed (or better: didn’t show). Because it wasn’t our day, in the last second of the game, Hamburg scored another goal. A goal of the month, a free kick directly converted from around the middle line.We all know these days, when you come back from work, thinking that you could better have stayed home and I think we need to give our players the credit that they can have such a day as well. Of course, we are allowed to be pissed off by the attitude they showed and the arrogance they started the game with, but in the end, they are human, too. If they show us that this was only a stupid little exception and that the team we have seen in the past weeks, the Borussia we have become to know and love so badly, is the real one, if this Borussia will be back on the pitch again in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, then I’m sure that every single one of us will gladly forgive them all for this one bad game. Go, black and yellow boys!